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.By 1945, only thirty partisan groupsmost of these tiny and internally fragmented were operating in the Czechlands.In short, resistance was very limited.Czech Communist partisansworried that this would stain the national honor.157 The same issue vexedEdvard Benea, for first the British and later the Soviets wanted evidencethat the Czechs were fighting with them against the Nazis hence Benea s1942 decision to assassinate Heydrich, despite the pleas from resistancegroups to target a Czech collaborator instead.The government in exile sradio broadcasts throughout the war called for acts of material sabotage,to no avail.158 Meanwhile, Karl Hermann Frank met every call for resis-tance with arrests and murders, publicly announced, and Czech informersfrom home demanded of Benea that his broadcasts contain only facts, notincitements.159 A Time of Iron and Fire 207The First Republic and the ThirdIn autumn 1944, the war in Europe was drawing to a weary, bloody close.The Allies were pushing east from the Atlantic coast, the Soviets movingsteadily westward.By February 1945 Allied and Red Army troops were inParis and Budapest.In the Protectorate, the impending Nazi loss madeitself felt: Czechs worked twelve to fourteen hours a day, six days a week,and clothes, food, and medicine were difficult to obtain.Chaos and publicviolence increased daily.Thousands of former concentration camp inmatesand ethnic Germans fled into the Protectorate from the northeast.Forcedlaborers returned home.A retreating Wehrmacht division moving throughMoravia brought with it tens of thousands of prisoners of war, slave labor-ers, and East European SS divisions. The SS troops still in the Czechlands burned down entire villages, killing their populations.160 The SlovakNational Uprising shook Nazi control over the Protectorate as well, and gavecourage to the splintered Czech resistance movement.Despite Nazi reprisals,the Czechs were ready in April 1945 when the Soviets entered Czech territoryand liberation was imminent.The Prague uprising began on May 5; bitterstreet and house-to-house fighting killed roughly 3,700 Czechs, woundingsome 3,000 more.161 On May 11, the last military operation in Europetook place east of Prague, as the Red Army cut off the last German ArmyGroup and took its 800,000 troops as prisoners of war.Meanwhile, Czechhostilities against Czechoslovak Germans, encouraged by Moscow, by Benea,and indirectly by the western Allies, led to the wild transfer monthsof violence against Germans and Czech collaborators, sometimes aided bySoviet soldiers.Estimates range from tens to hundreds of thousands ofGermans killed, and from 600,000 to more than a million forcibly expelledfrom Czechoslovakia.162 Benea arrived in Prague on May 16, 1945, with thecountry well on its way to becoming, as he had stated during the war, a Czechoslovak nation-state. Negotiations through the spring of 1945 had laid the ground for theKoaice program, the basis of postwar Czechoslovak politics and society,announced in the easternmost city of Slovakia on April 4, 1945.The programcalled for thorough political reorganization.It limited the number of partiesto four, and banned from public life those parties that had collaboratedwith the Nazis, including the Agrarians, the largest party in Bohemia andMoravia for a half-century.Banks and insurance companies, energy utilities,and major industries were to be nationalized.The new government partiespledged to control wages and prices on basic goods.Local government wasdecentralized into committees and granted wide-ranging power.On April5, 1945, in Koaice, in a public address, Benea drew a direct, if dubious, 208 Battle for the Castleconnection between the interwar Castle s political vision and his postwarplans for change: To this program as I already promised in Prague Cas-tle on the day of Masaryk s funeral I myself remained faithful under allcircumstances, and faithful I shall remain. 163But the most powerful organization in postwar Czechoslovakia had nointention of remaining faithful to the First Republic or Masarykian ideals.The Czechoslovak Communist Party (KS ) had been substantially strength-ened by the Soviet Union s alliance with Czechoslovakia in 1943 and the RedArmy s liberation of East-Central Europe.The KS had failed to organize asuccessful wartime resistance, but it had made the strongest attempt and paidin blood for its efforts.Unlike Benea, the Communists bore no responsibilityfor Munich or the other errors of the First Republic.Unsullied by the past,the KS was widely viewed as the country s future and attracted members indroves: the Communist Party of the early postwar years was, and remains,the largest party in Czech history. 164 Benea, while very popular, was seri-ously ill when he returned from London.The advantage of strength anddynamism seemed to lie with the Communists, who won 38 percent ofthe vote in the elections of 1946 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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.By 1945, only thirty partisan groupsmost of these tiny and internally fragmented were operating in the Czechlands.In short, resistance was very limited.Czech Communist partisansworried that this would stain the national honor.157 The same issue vexedEdvard Benea, for first the British and later the Soviets wanted evidencethat the Czechs were fighting with them against the Nazis hence Benea s1942 decision to assassinate Heydrich, despite the pleas from resistancegroups to target a Czech collaborator instead.The government in exile sradio broadcasts throughout the war called for acts of material sabotage,to no avail.158 Meanwhile, Karl Hermann Frank met every call for resis-tance with arrests and murders, publicly announced, and Czech informersfrom home demanded of Benea that his broadcasts contain only facts, notincitements.159 A Time of Iron and Fire 207The First Republic and the ThirdIn autumn 1944, the war in Europe was drawing to a weary, bloody close.The Allies were pushing east from the Atlantic coast, the Soviets movingsteadily westward.By February 1945 Allied and Red Army troops were inParis and Budapest.In the Protectorate, the impending Nazi loss madeitself felt: Czechs worked twelve to fourteen hours a day, six days a week,and clothes, food, and medicine were difficult to obtain.Chaos and publicviolence increased daily.Thousands of former concentration camp inmatesand ethnic Germans fled into the Protectorate from the northeast.Forcedlaborers returned home.A retreating Wehrmacht division moving throughMoravia brought with it tens of thousands of prisoners of war, slave labor-ers, and East European SS divisions. The SS troops still in the Czechlands burned down entire villages, killing their populations.160 The SlovakNational Uprising shook Nazi control over the Protectorate as well, and gavecourage to the splintered Czech resistance movement.Despite Nazi reprisals,the Czechs were ready in April 1945 when the Soviets entered Czech territoryand liberation was imminent.The Prague uprising began on May 5; bitterstreet and house-to-house fighting killed roughly 3,700 Czechs, woundingsome 3,000 more.161 On May 11, the last military operation in Europetook place east of Prague, as the Red Army cut off the last German ArmyGroup and took its 800,000 troops as prisoners of war.Meanwhile, Czechhostilities against Czechoslovak Germans, encouraged by Moscow, by Benea,and indirectly by the western Allies, led to the wild transfer monthsof violence against Germans and Czech collaborators, sometimes aided bySoviet soldiers.Estimates range from tens to hundreds of thousands ofGermans killed, and from 600,000 to more than a million forcibly expelledfrom Czechoslovakia.162 Benea arrived in Prague on May 16, 1945, with thecountry well on its way to becoming, as he had stated during the war, a Czechoslovak nation-state. Negotiations through the spring of 1945 had laid the ground for theKoaice program, the basis of postwar Czechoslovak politics and society,announced in the easternmost city of Slovakia on April 4, 1945.The programcalled for thorough political reorganization.It limited the number of partiesto four, and banned from public life those parties that had collaboratedwith the Nazis, including the Agrarians, the largest party in Bohemia andMoravia for a half-century.Banks and insurance companies, energy utilities,and major industries were to be nationalized.The new government partiespledged to control wages and prices on basic goods.Local government wasdecentralized into committees and granted wide-ranging power.On April5, 1945, in Koaice, in a public address, Benea drew a direct, if dubious, 208 Battle for the Castleconnection between the interwar Castle s political vision and his postwarplans for change: To this program as I already promised in Prague Cas-tle on the day of Masaryk s funeral I myself remained faithful under allcircumstances, and faithful I shall remain. 163But the most powerful organization in postwar Czechoslovakia had nointention of remaining faithful to the First Republic or Masarykian ideals.The Czechoslovak Communist Party (KS ) had been substantially strength-ened by the Soviet Union s alliance with Czechoslovakia in 1943 and the RedArmy s liberation of East-Central Europe.The KS had failed to organize asuccessful wartime resistance, but it had made the strongest attempt and paidin blood for its efforts.Unlike Benea, the Communists bore no responsibilityfor Munich or the other errors of the First Republic.Unsullied by the past,the KS was widely viewed as the country s future and attracted members indroves: the Communist Party of the early postwar years was, and remains,the largest party in Czech history. 164 Benea, while very popular, was seri-ously ill when he returned from London.The advantage of strength anddynamism seemed to lie with the Communists, who won 38 percent ofthe vote in the elections of 1946 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]